ABSTRACT
Ghaziabad, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, is a rapidly growing city that borders metropolitan Delhi. In November 2008 a small band of waste pickers in Ghaziabad began a low-key protest. Their issue? Extortion, under pain of violence. A group of previously unknown people was demanding a payment of Rs. 400-600 per month from each waste picker in exchange for letting them continue their work. According to the waste pickers, they would be approached by ‘agents’ of a contractor, Chand Qureshi, claiming that he now owned all rights over waste in the area. If anyone wanted to
pick waste, they would have to compensate him. Not doing so, he warned, would be tantamount to theft, which he threatened to deal with severely. Waste pickers refusing to comply were beaten up. Fearful, several of them began to pay Qureshi the monthly amount he demanded. With the collapse in global (and subsequently, local) scrap prices, the payment equaled nearly fi ve days’ earnings for the average picker.
